CHIP & JOANNA GAINES - 'We don't want to waste these moments'

AFTER 20 YEARS OF MARRIAGE (AND WORKING TOGETHER ON THEIR MAGNOLIA EMPIRE), THE COUPLE ARE TAKING ON NEW CHALLENGES AND EMBRACING THE NEXT CHAPTER

- MACKENZIE SCHMIDT, EMILY STROHM

About a month ago, Joanna Gaines signed up for her first-ever horseback-riding lesson. “I have a dream to barrel race,” says the Magnolia Network star, describing the rodeo event in which a rider attempts to zoom around a set of drums in a cloverleaf pattern in the fastest time possible. At a professional level that can be about 15 seconds. At hers, it’s a bit less brisk. “I’m not saying I’m fast,” she hedges. “Maybe we should call it barrel trotting.”

Though Joanna may not be the consummate cowgirl—in fact, she admits, she’s “terrified” of horses—the sport is the latest in a series of adventurous hobbies she’s picked up. Last year it was beekeeping, which forced her to face another lifelong fear. Before that she had rediscovered a childhood love of roller-skating.

Her husband, Chip, 49, couldn’t be happier to support her from the sidelines. “I want to be her biggest cheerleader,” he says. “I’m like, ‘Hey, you go do whatever. My knees are killing me.’”

Their current outlooks are just about the opposite of what fans have come to expect from the pair, who opened their first small home-goods store in Waco, Texas, in 2003—named Magnolia after a flower he once climbed a tree to pick for her— and have since grown that into a lifestyle empire, including a hit HGTV show, countless product lines, books and, in 2022, their own television network. Over the past 10 years on Fixer Upper and its spinoffs, Joanna has remained even-keeled, contained and organized, and Chip has often been found atop ladders planning practical jokes or bursting through drywall. Joanna jokes about chalking the switch up to a “midlife crisis,” but at 45, she says, “we just see life differently now.”